My Hill to Die On

Were I to choose a hill to die upon, it would be something like this neolithic stone circle atop a green, grassy hill with a likely burial mound in the middle of it. 

However. If we're talking about copy edits. Well. I'm kind of a pain in the grass. 

Like Jeffe, I've had run ins with copy editors who've never met a metaphor they've liked. Most of the time, I can look at the suggested changes, raise my eye brows, snort and say, "You can fuck right off" to my inanimate computer screen at the same time I'm typing "Stet." 99.5% of the time, my copy editors save my backside - one caught an eye color change on a hero that both my editor and I had missed. So copy editors get big benefits of lots of doubts from me. And even if I disagree with copy edit, for most things, it just doesn't matter and I accept the change.

Where it does matter is when a copy editor harps on and on and on (usually about a metaphor, occasionally a genre trope) in a way that would change the voice of the story, the character, or me, then I get cranky. Really, really cranky. Cranky to the point that I once went to my editor and asked if I could never have that copy editor again. I felt like I was being childish or, worse, a diva. But she just laughed and said, "Absolutely. You aren't the first author to mention it. It won't be a problem going forward." That was a relief.

The only problem I have - and this is 100% a me thing - I'm stuck on subbing each other (3+ people) for one another (2 people). I just don't like the way one another sounds. I do like the way each other sounds. It's something I should probably get over. Probably. Mainly because I'm not sure it's really worth being on a hill for. Much less dying on that hill for.
 

Fighting the Good Fight for the Metaphor of It All

The Covenant is complete! Book 3 in A Covenant of Thorns, ROGUE'S PARADISE, is now out in the wild, walking its wild ways. Thanks to all for supporting this re-release of my very first dark fantasy romance trilogy. It's beyond wonderful to see these books finding a new audience after all these years. 

This week at the SFF Seven, we're talking about copyeditors and the arguments we have with them. We all have grammatical hills we'll die on - wisely or not - and we want to know what yours is! On what point will you refuse to give way, regardless of how the copyeditor might argue?

(I feel I should note at this point that the author/editor/copyeditor relationship is a symbiotic one. Even in traditional publishing - all rumor to the contrary of authors being "forced" to do x, y, z - seldom will anyone INSIST on a change. Almost always the author has final say, because it is their book, and they also bear final responsibility. It's in the contract. If an author commits slander or other blunders, the ultimate responsibility - financial, legal, and moral - rests with them.)

I, like most authors, have a love/hate relationship with copyeditors. On the one hand, they catch potentially horrifying errors. In fact, in the book above, the copyeditor corrected a character "peeing at her face" to "peering at her face" - something my editor and I had both missed and were hysterically relieved to have fixed.

We love them. We need them. As with all love/hate relationships, copyeditors drive us crazy. 

I won't fight about commas, as a rule. I really even don't care about the Oxford comma. I know people like to make jokes showing how important that Oxford comma is, but in most cases the context makes it clear. I don't get why copyeditors hate m-dashes so much, but I'll concede in many cases. I personally find semi-colons archaic and not all that useful, but whatever. 

You know what gets me, what I'll really fight for? 

Metaphorical language.

That's what kills me (yes, LITERALLY KILLS ME) about many copyeditors is that they can be so freaking literal. Some examples.

"His eyes can't really crawl over her. Imagine eyeballs rolling over her. Gross."

"Can a cloud really look sad?"

"I don't think this is a word."

I could go on. The thing is, as writers, we're often expanding the use of language. Dictionary definitions often include citations of first usage of a "new" word or expression. That's because language is our medium and we are the ones shaping it. Copyeditors are on the side of enforcing the status quo. So a writer ends up walking the line between bending to the regulatory insistence of correctness as the rules currently stand and being the iconoclast who breaks those rules to open up new worlds.

Guess which side I'm on?

Yeah, copyeditors hate me right back. 

But, I believe this push-pull is a part of our jobs, on both sides. We all want to produce the best book possible. We all love language and what it can do. I will say, however, to all the writers out there: believe in yourself and defend your words, because you are the fount of change. 

 

The Hill of Pedantry vs Copy Edits

This Week's Topic:

What hill will I die on, even if my copy editor insists otherwise?

On what hill will I perish for pedantry? 

The Oxford Comma.
Use it. Love it. Never relinquish it. No excuses.

In all fairness, my current copy editor is #TeamOxford too. When I worked in online publishing--where character count is king--the copy editors were not on this team. Ack. Wince. Grargh.

I love, love, love the copy editor I have now. She is worth every penny. 99.6% of the time I don't argue with her. It's "Accept Changes" all the way down the manuscript. I even surrendered to the idiom over the nominative use of "to be." (e.g. idiom = It's me. Grammatically correct = It is I.) She knows my style, works within it, and never tries to change my voice for the sake of AP or Chicago. Usually, if I ignore one of her edits it's because I've co-opted a "real" word for a fantastical definition. 

We won't discuss the gray hairs I've given her over my Use of Capping All The Things.

Or my love of ellipses.

Or my abuse of hyphens.

One day, I'll win the "keeping semicolons in dialogue" disagreement, though.  

Once I muster the courage. 😅

Nitpicky Editing

 Edits. You never know what you're going to get when you entrust you WIP to someone else's critical eye. The only way you get to pick your editor is if you're self-publishing. The rest of the time, you get the luck of the draw. 

I don't have a horror story per se - just an annoyed the crap out of me story. I had a copy editor, a copy editor I hadn't picked. This copy editor defined nitpicker. He didn't understand my genre. He had a totally literal brain and a need to prove he was smarter than anyone else. So rather than simply marking that I'd overused a word, there just had to be a condescending comment about it.

I gritted my teeth, muttered, "Fuck you" under my breath a lot. But even if I didn't appreciate the nonsense, I had to check my ego and make corrections regardless of the BS comments. I also did check in with my editor, who was amazing. I asked if it was possible to request that a copy editor NOT be assigned to my work any longer. She chuckled and said, "Yes, it is. I wondered how you'd feel about that copy edit. I disagreed with some of the edits. I feel like he was changing your voice." 

A vast wave of relief washed over me. I wasn't just being a jerk when I declined a bunch of suggested edits. I was preserving my story and my voice.

I learned several things from this experience:

• Never submit your master  copy to your editor - keep a back up that is your clean copy. 
• If you have concerns, always talk to your editor in a calm, professional manner.
  
• If you're self-publishing, remember you hired 'em, you can fire 'em. Don't spend time furthering a mistake just because you spent a long time (or a lot of money spent) making it.
• Ask other authors for recommendations before you hire any kind of editor. 
• No one caution or solution will prevent poor experiences, but if you make sure you always keep a clean copy in your files, you have a fall back.

Finally, it doesn't matter how many annoying edits I get, I'll always ask for edits from someone who gets paid for doing the job. I'm not equipped to call myself on my own bad writing habits and I like my readers too much to leave those habits unchallenged. 

Manifesto of a former grammarista

Folk who know me best also know I used to be a copy editor at a book publisher. I mean, for like a decade. And then I managed copy editors. And then I wrote style guides. That sort of work history will scar a girl, and even to this day, despite my best efforts at self-improvement, parts of my brain remain a bit proscriptive. If you could make Strunk & White's Elements of Style into a verb, that would be my brain ("Oh, don't mind me, I'm just over here StrunkNWhiting").

So, even though I'd never harp on these abominations to your face (we don't do this! we never do this!), here is what those brain-parts are screaming as I read your manuscript:

1. Dangling or misplaced modifiers help no one, ever. Unfortunately, I see a bunch of these, even in published books. Educate yourself on these things and avoid them. Please, please, please.

2. Yes, character names ending in S are fun (I love me a Rhys, an Alexis, a Lucius, maybe a...Salacious?). However! Be aware that there are two legit ways of making possessives of a singular noun ending in S: one way has you add an apostrophe+S, and with the other you add just the apostrophe. It's important that you know going in that whichever method you choose, half of your readers will be completely and totally convinced you're doing it wrong. So, just stick with boring non-ending-in-S names, yeah? Also, don't harangue people who are choosing the other method. They're okay, too.

3. There can be only one...space after a period. If you are putting two spaces, congratulations for passing typing in high school all those years ago. Also, welcome to variable-width fonts and the twenty-first century. (Aside: This is the topic at SFF Seven this week. We are seriously discussing whether there should be one space or two. I love this blog so much!)

4. I know you really want to use a semicolon, but restrain yourself. Don't do it. Even if you think you know how to use a semicolon, sadly, you're probably doing it wrong.

Oh, now that you've got me rolling, I can think of SO MANY peeves, things that just make me crazy: sentence fragments with no subjects and a whole buncha -ing phrases, homonym misuses, pronouns that refer to the wrong thing or nothing at all, word repeats, run-on sentences... yikes!PANIC!JUDGMENT!

*in through your nose, then out through pursed lips*

You know what, though? Don't mind me and my ridiculous, proscriptive (adj, StrunkNWhiteous?) brain. Tell your story. Tell the hell out of it. If you tell me a good enough story, I won't even pick nits.